


stop me if you've heard this one before

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Chaos, Episode: s04e09 William, F/M, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Missing Scene, Multi, like herding cats tbh, paranoia trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25317109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: Three people Duke’s in love with get handcuffed to a table. There isn't any punchline. Which is too bad, because he really, really,reallywould much rather that this were the setup to a joke.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker, Duke Crocker/Dwight Hendrickson, Duke Crocker/Jennifer Mason (Haven), Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos
Comments: 12
Kudos: 34
Collections: Haven Month 2020





	stop me if you've heard this one before

**Author's Note:**

> A text I sent to Parker_Haven_Wuornos about a month ago while watching this episode reads simply, "Duke's ex, gf, and crush are all in a room together and they're acting like NIGHTMARES" and i haven't stopped thinking about this idea since.
> 
> So, my submission to the "missing scene" prompt of Haven month is closer to an "extended scene" than one that's properly MISSING, but I hope it still counts.

Three people Duke’s in love with get handcuffed to a table. There isn’t any punchline. Which is too bad, because he really, really, _really_ would much rather that this were the setup to a joke.

“Let’s all just breathe, okay?”

Not that anything is ever easy in this waking nightmare of a town, but Duke has had a _particularly_ impossible day. His morning started with Teagues 1 and Teagues 2 inviting themselves onto his boat, and—miraculously—things got worse from there.

As nice as it is to be at the station and _not_ be the one in handcuffs, he didn’t exactly sign up to babysit anybody through their bad acid trip of a trouble, today. Least of all this particular combination of people. At least no one is holding a goddamn _taser_ anymore. He’ll take the victories where he can get them.

“I think,” he sighs, as calmly and placatingly as he can, “that if you’d all just take a second to think about it, you’ll realize that you’re being _incredibly_ unreasonable.”

Nathan shoves Duke (and a collection of paperwork) off the table and Jennifer laughs.

“Okay,” Duke singsongs tersely. Huffing out a frustrated noise, he runs a hand through his hair. He can salvage this. “How about deep breathing? Hm? How’s that sound? Just some nice, calming breaths in and out. In—”

Nathan interrupts him with a bored, “Shove it up your ass.”

Leveling Nathan with an exasperated glare, Duke forces down his irritation and tries a different tact, “Okay. Breathing is out. How do we feel about meditation? Happy place? Some relaxing spa music?”

“Why don’t you just leave?” Jennifer suggests wryly. “Since you’re so good at it.”

Duke clicks his teeth.

“Okay,” he concedes, trying very hard to keep his grip on the upbeat, calm persona. “I deserved that. Maybe we’ll just have some, uh. Quiet time.”

“You’re the one who never shuts up,” Nathan drawls. If it weren’t for the wild look in his eyes, Duke might not attribute that comment to the trouble at all.

Duke shakes a finger at him, forcing a placating laugh. “Gonna give you a pass for that one ‘cause your brains are scrambled.”

Nathan leans forward, a gleefully cruel expression on his face. “You’re just scared,” he baits, “that if you stop talking, everyone’ll figure out you don’t have anything to say.”

“Jesus Christ, Nathan,” Duke squeaks. “Yikes.” He lifts his hands in surrender.

Jennifer turns in her seat to face Nathan. “You’re wrong,” she challenges.

Buoyed by a mix of relief and surprise, Duke jumps the gun with a bright, satisfied, “ _Thank_ you!” Turns out, he really should have waited for her to finish her sentence.

She aims a smug little sneer at him and taunts, “Everyone already knows he doesn’t have anything to say.”

It really had to be _this_ specific combination of people who got whammied, huh?

Duke shakes off the hurt and puts his foot down instead. “Ooh-kay! Remember quiet time? We’re gonna have some quiet time.” He runs a hand over his face, puffing out an exhausted sigh. “Audrey put me in charge of a bunch of kindergartners. Really, really mean kindergarteners.”

Nathan opens his mouth—undoubtedly to drop some new, scathing, damnably personal observation—but Duke interrupts him with a blurted, “Ah, ah, ah! Quiet!” Softer, more as an aside to himself than anything, he adds a mumbled, “I need time to think. How does Audrey _do_ this?”

Before Nathan can even fully conceptualize whatever rude little thought sparks in his head, Duke snarks out a warning, “Nathan, I swear to god.”

Nathan settles petulantly back in his chair, but—blessedly—grants Duke the quiet he’s been asking for. With Nathan and Jennifer corralled (for now), Duke turns his attention to Tall, Blonde, and Silent. Dwight sits like a coiled spring, his hands balled into fists on the table, a vein standing out in stark relief on his forehead. Duke isn’t sure if Dwight’s about to start swinging or crack like an egg, but he doesn’t like either option.

He nods to the ever-growing dark patch on the front of Dwight’s shirt. (A shame, he can’t help but think. He liked that shirt.) “Squatch, you’re bleeding. Can I please—”

“Don’t touch me,” Dwight snarls, with an intensity of disgust that stings no matter how much Duke tries to remind himself it isn’t genuine. “You’re a murderer.”

Hey. He isn’t wrong.

Duke staggers back a few steps when Dwight lurches his direction. The cuffs stop his progress, but Duke isn’t entirely convinced that Dwight couldn’t snap the table like a soda cracker if he put his mind to it, and he’d really rather not test that theory.

He spent the better part of today trying to convince Dwight he was innocent and all it earned him was a few thousand volts to the chest, so he doesn’t waste his time arguing. Instead, he sighs, “Look, I can’t kill you with a Band-Aid, okay? Will you please just let me patch you back up before you pass out on the table?”

Dwight watches him with an expression that’s off-kilter and cautious, like an injured animal. For a moment, Duke is pretty sure Dwight’s either going to tell him to go fuck himself, or else stage some kind of surprise attack.

Whatever’s left of Dwight’s common sense must kick in, though, because he breaks eye contact and puffs a quiet, “Fine.” Every muscle in his body stays taut, but he doesn’t yank away when Duke sits on the edge of the table, beside him.

Duke flags down one of the officers milling around the building—all of whom seem to be giving the table full of feral cats a wide berth. “Hey,” Duke says, “You guys have a first aid kid lying around here somewhere, right?” The officer rounds the corner to find him one and Duke refocuses on the issue at hand.

Duke keeps a careful eye on Dwight as he undoes the first few buttons of his shirt. He can’t be sure Dwight won’t try to headbutt him to death when his guard’s down. But he’s behaving—for the moment, at least. He sits tense but still when Duke pushes the shirt off his shoulder to get a better look at the wound.

“Maybe it isn’t Audrey I should be worried about,” Jennifer mutters, caustic and unhappy. Duke isn’t sure what hurts more: the fact that she isn’t entirely wrong or that she thinks so low of him that she feels like she ought to ‘worry’ about any of them.

Taking a measured breath—just because these three refuse to entertain the idea of a little meditative breathing, doesn’t mean he won’t—Duke exhales and lets go of that thought. It isn’t a fair way to frame the question, in the end. None of them are thinking straight. She wouldn’t say it if it weren’t for the trouble buzzing around her head. (The problem, of course, is that he can’t be sure she wouldn’t still _think_ it.)

He and Jennifer haven’t exactly had the time to sit down and put a name to the thing between them, just yet. If they had, he’d have been able to address the Nathan and Audrey shaped elephant in the room. They could have hashed out boundaries and intentions and he could have put any latent fears at rest.

Dwight’s a different issue—simultaneously more convoluted and less. There’s no loaded backstory between them to overcomplicate things. Duke’s relationship with Dwight is, instead, populated by an ongoing catalog of _almost_ s. Times they _almost_ kissed, _almost_ went home together, _almost_ let the subtext of a conversation wander out into the light.

Dwight respects him. Maybe it’s pathetic to love him for that, but Duke’s never claimed to be above being pathetic.

It takes an alarming amount of time for anyone in the building to track him down a goddamn first aid kit. He makes a note to hassle Nathan about it whenever Nathan’s… Nathan again.

Duke’s first instinct tells him to flinch away from the blood and wound. His second, worse impulse begs him to reach for it—the rush of it. Neither matters, in the end. The Crocker curse died with Wade. On the one hand, he’s grateful. On the other, he’s pretty screwed right now if Dwight changes his mind and decides to pop his skull like a grape.

“Take it easy, big guy,” Duke murmurs when Dwight acts even more agitated than before. The words don’t exactly _soothe_ Dwight, but he forces himself still. Somewhere behind him, Nathan kicks the table and—feeling or no—Duke’s damn certain it was on purpose.

Now that he’s gotten a look at it, Duke realizes that the wound is beyond him, anyway. Dwight’s torn his stitches and he needs more than a couple of butterfly Band-Aids and a few feet of gauze, but it’s all Duke’s got to offer him. He re-dresses the wound as best he can before tugging Dwight’s shirt back into place and straightening his collar—as if he could tidy his way around the fist sized bloodstain dripping down the front.

He dumps the old bandage and bloodied alcohol wipes into the trash and settles back on his heels to look at the three of them. Dwight drums his fingers against the table, restless in a way he never is. Nathan sits still and steely and focused. Jennifer jitters with excess energy. All three of them look at him like he’s public enemy number one.

He settles on the table with a huff. “I see playing nice is out of the cards,” he grumbles.

Infuriatingly, there isn’t much left for him to do but sit around and wait for Audrey to come through with the solution to their paranoia problem.

“You know, if everybody weren’t being so unreasonable, we could all be sitting around playing poker, checkers, what-have-you.” Nathan shoves at him again, sending the first aid kit tumbling to the floor. Duke rolls his eyes and gestures to him with a tired, irritated, “I rest my case.”

Things move awfully quickly from there.

Something dark and inorganic looking floats out of Dwight, Nathan, and Jennifer’s head and disappears down the hall. Duke books it to the interrogation room to find the little creepy guy missing. After an afternoon of strangeness, everyone returns—instantly—to normal.

From there, it’s all cleanup and damage control.

* * *

Duke bumps into Audrey outside the Gull while he’s moving boxes from his trunk. The world spins on and all that. After the day he had, there was still dinner rush at the Gull to deal with, still shelves that needed stocking. There’s something comforting to the work, though. Bartending makes sense in a way that chasing after the troubles never will.

Audrey looks as worn out as he feels.

He sets down his box at his feet, shooting Audrey a tired smile when he teases, “Next time? _I_ get to go on the fun fieldtrip with the interdimensional boyfriend, and _you_ get to be the one who babysits Lock, Shock, and Barrel.”

Audrey pauses partway up the stairs, turning around to roll her eyes at him. “Trust me, the uh, interdimensional boyfriend wasn’t exactly a blast, either.” She offers him a sympathetic smile. “That bad, huh?”

Giving a one shouldered shrug, Duke rolls his eyes and drawls, “Eh, they’re lucky I have a thick skin.” He lifts the box again, balancing it on his hip. “If I never see another paranoia trouble again, it’ll be too soon.”

“I don’t think it was a trouble,” Audrey muses, her brows creasing in a way he can’t help but find charming. “It was something—weirder than that. More complicated. I don’t know.”

“Weird and complicated? In Haven?” Duke grins, buoyed by the relief of things settling back into some vague sense of normalcy. He chuckles. “You know, somehow, I think we’ll manage.”

She flashes a smile that has his heartbeat kicking into double-time. “Yeah,” she agrees. “We’ll figure it out.”


End file.
